Joseph Sabino Mistick: Balancing tough policing and reform

It’s been decades since an off-duty Pittsburgh beat cop shared a few beers and some stories at the neighborhood bar on the eve of his retirement. When a kid asked if he ever shot anyone during his 30 years walking a beat, the cop said, “I only drew my weapon twice and I never shot it even once. I got to know the people, and I helped them out when they needed it. My job was simple.”

Things are not so simple anymore because the police must be everywhere and do everything. They look for lost dogs, check in on older citizens, direct traffic, provide first aid, settle arguments, control crowds, wrestle drunks and respond to accidents and fires and assaults, all while racing around the zone in a police cruiser. And when they confront true evil, they must be ready to shoot it out.

There are a lot of tough jobs in America — coal miner, laborer, nurse and firefighter all qualify — but police officer is right at the top. An officer’s oath is to uphold the law, but lately there has been no agreement on exactly how they are supposed to get that done, and they often face no-win decisions.

During the Black Lives Matter protests in Pittsburgh, it seemed that the police could never get it right. They were damned for overreacting to those protesters who were peacefully exercising their First Amendment Rights. And they were damned for not being tougher on the protesters who were violent.

Across the nation, voters are being asked to choose between a tough stand against violent crime and a more enlightened approach to the social problems that we have criminalized. And Americans’ philosophical split on this was obvious last week during New York state’s primary elections.

Eric Adams, a gun-carrying former cop who has urged off-duty police officers to carry their weapons in their houses of worship, leads in the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor (results in the ranked-choice voting system are still being calculated). And the voters in Buffalo nominated socialist India Walton for mayor, overturning a longtime incumbent. The 38-year-old nurse and political newcomer promised to cut $7.5 million from the police budget and reallocate it to jobs, housing and education.

But we don’t have time to play either-or. Violent crimes and homicides are going up, and police departments are shrinking. CNN reported, “Sixty-three of the 66 largest police jurisdictions saw increases in at least one category of violent crimes in 2020.” A 2020 Police Executive Research Forum survey showed a 63% decrease in police officer applications and a wave of retirements.

And those highly publicized calls to “defund the police” don’t help. It is hard to imagine a dumber and more counter-productive slogan, because those words will be used to mischaracterize and defeat the much-needed reforms that are the goal of the people who utter those words.

Our first job is to decide what scares us. Tough laws and tough cops and tough consequences are necessary to deal with violent crime. But we must also immediately decriminalize inconsequential infractions that have disproportionately impacted our families and communities for generations.

We need both tough policing and police reforms.